Pages

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

"Happiness is now defined not as having the basics I need, but as ensuring that someone else does not have more."

Obama has successfully
appealed to the oldest and basest of human emotions — envy and jealousy,
masked with the notion of enforced fairness — and for now they trump
even the human desire to be free. . . .

The traditional conservative antidote to Obamaism has fallen short. That
is, the arguments of principled conservatives about the perils of big
government, redistributionist economics, and diminutions in personal
freedom seem for a majority of Americans to be outweighed by the
attraction of government subsidies and entitlements. If there is going
to be a check on Barack Obama’s redistributionist agenda, it will
probably have to come from upper-middle-class independent voters and
blue-state residents. Such Obama supporters may soon notice that the new
federal and state tax rates, the envisioned end to traditional
deductions such as those for blue-state high taxes and for mortgage
interest, and means testing for most government services are aimed
precisely at themselves. When the Palo Alto resident grasps that his
total income- and payroll-tax burden will be well over 50 percent, his
tax deduction for the mortgage interest on his million-dollar-plus,
1,000-square-foot home will be eliminated, and his $250,000 salary still
gets him counted as “rich” even after huge taxes and mortgage costs, we
may see change — perhaps not in terms of the number of large swings in
actual votes, but in the nature of campaign donations, political
commentary, and campaign organization. Blue-state elites do not yet
believe the voracious Obama tax monster is coming for them, but it is —
as they will see.